Screaming Ceiling Cats

Ceiling Cat’s Cradle

Back in September of 2019 I wrote about how the 100-amp main breaker for my electrical power went flakey and then flooey. That ended up being a $2400 service call because I also got new smoke alarms, a carbon monoxide detector, and a main power surge protector. [See Whadda Week!]

I was and am fine with everything. Obviously, glad to have reliable electrical power. Presumably the surge protector is doing its thing, and the CO detector blinks its green light every minute, so it seems happy.

But while I’ve had no fire nor anything like it, the ceiling cats have shown a trying tendency to go off seemingly randomly — all four screeching loudly from their cradles and seriously raising my heartrate.

It’s especially disturbing when it happens at 3 AM at night when I’m sound asleep. At night the loud screeching is accompanied by extremely bright light shining down from them. Hell of a way to wake up for no good reason.

All four are connected by Bluetooth, so if one goes off, they all begin to wail in unison. Four times the screeching. By the time I find a chair or something to stand on to the button to shut them down, my heart is really pounding. Takes a long time to get back to sleep or to whatever task I was working on.

There was a period of some weeks where the one in the bedroom decided it had a problem and went into an error condition. It would then make a loud shrill beep every 60 seconds, and its annular LED would be flashing red.

I’d have to find a chair and push the reset button until it calmed down. About 24 hours later, we’d repeat the routine. I kept the chair under the damn thing until finally it decided it was okay and hasn’t done that again.

I came really close to calling Service Today (the company that installed them) to have them come out, but it didn’t quite rise to the level of wanting service people in my place, and it was long enough after the install, I wasn’t sure what kind of support I’d get. More to the point, how much they’d end up charging me for something I felt was on them and didn’t want to face having to argue about it.

[I know, I know, it’s self-sabotage to assume something will go badly, but (A) I’m only human, and (2) I think it’s largely rationalization for just not wanting service people tromping around.]

And let’s face it, as problems sometimes do, it went away on its own. Had it continued for months, I definitely would have had them out here.

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That’s where things have stood for a while. Other than that stretch of weeks where one seemed confused, my only complaint has been the damn false alarms. But as with that error condition, the problem never quite rose to the, “Oh damn. I gotta deal with this. Another detour from where I was headed.”

Because they’re connected to each other via Bluetooth, I’ve wondered if some kind of signal interference could be what’s setting them off. Sometimes I can attribute it to especially bad air quality, but sometimes I can’t find any reason for them to go off.

They went off in the latter part of July. Not for the first time this year, I think, but I don’t keep track. (I probably should.) Resetting them quieted them as usual. Later, I used my weather app (Windy; highly recommended) to check out the air quality:

PM2.5: Particulate Matter with a diameter of 2.5 microns or less.

Ah, that doesn’t look good at all. There was also this one:

CO: Carbon Monoxide. Really nasty in the upper northwest!

Oof, a stream of very bad air being driven right at us. Okay, I guess I can understand why my ceiling cats howled. That’s happened before when smoke from forest fires has blown our way. I might wish the ceiling cats were less sensitive, but it’s probably good that they are.

Okay, fair enough, and I confirmed that Canadian forest fires had been raging, and some of them were very large:

Lots of forest fires! [See Canadian WFIS Interactive Map.]

So, no fault on the ceiling cats screeching at me that time. I was watching TV wearing headphones when they went off, so it took me a moment to realize it wasn’t part of the show I was watching.

And this brings us to last Saturday.

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Again, minding my own business, just watching TV. I had cooked dinner, but it had been at least an hour, and nothing came close to being burned. (Cooked the exact same thing before many times without any alarms.)

And they went off. Friday and Saturday nights are my beer nights, and I’d had a couple, but — once I realized the damn things were going off again and took off my headphones and went looking for a chair — this all sobered me up quickly.

This time I couldn’t get them to stop.

I pushed the reset button. I double-pushed the reset button. I pushed the reset button and held it down for a ten count.

Ceiling cats all screeched on.

And mind you, I’m standing on a chair with my head inches below one of them, so the sound is ringing in my ears, driving my tinnitus crazy, and making my heart pound.

And. I. Can’t. Get. Them. To. Stop. Screeching.

Adrenaline took over, and I ripped the one over my head off the ceiling (see photo up top).

The others kept screeching.

In for a penny, in for a pound. I moved my chair to the one in my office and ripped it off the ceiling, too. The ceiling cat in the bedroom, apparently fearing for its life, got quiet. But the one in the living room, the one way up at the peak of the arched ceiling (out of reach of even my ladder), that one kept howling.

I have a long pole intended to open the skylight. I used that to poke the cat’s reset button — again, press, nope, double-press, nope, press-and-hold, nope — to no avail. It didn’t work on the one I could reach, why would it work on the one I couldn’t?

I was thinking I’d have to somehow knock it down, but it finally decided it had had enough for one night. I’d had more than enough.

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I wasn’t gentle removing the two I did, so they’re wounded and currently sitting on a shelf. The other two, perhaps fearful of my ire, have remained nice and quiet ever since. And I’m working myself up to calling the service guys back. I’ll have a hard time complaining about any charge this time. They’ll have to fix the wires that got pulled out of the plugs.

An irony is that Service Today sent me an email (and a couple reminders) that they offered a free service call to inspect the smoke alarms and replace the batteries, if needed. (When they installed them, they assured me the batteries were good for ten years.) I meant to call them, but I kept putting it off due to my aversion to service people in my place. Hard to see if having them out in May would have changed anything.

Ah, well, so it goes. It is what it is.

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Why is it so hard to get out of my own way sometimes? You’d think I’ve lived long enough to not only know better but have learned to do better. Life is a process.

Stay safe, my friends! Go forth and spread beauty and light.

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